Obama's immigration ploy gains him nada

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

To help smother the dismal reviews of his economic reset speech last week in Cleveland, President Obama scheduled a last-minute Rose Garden appearance Friday morning to add some presidential heft to his executive order about immigration.

Whenever he's in trouble, the one-time Real Good Talker throws another speech out there. Until this spring's troubles, everybody always said speaking was his strong suit. His Fidel Castro-length economic remarks blamed Europe, Congress and the usual Texan for the nation's re-sinking economy.

But -- are you sitting down? -- it contained no new ideas. He's still waiting for Congress to do something, you see.

So, the 6,300 words ended up merely calling more sustained attention to the administration's idea bankruptcy, to the dim outlook for job improvements and to how bad the economy remains, despite all the promises more than 700 days ago of a magnificent Recovery Summer. Two-thirds of Americans remain convinced their country is still mired in recession.

So, to change the subject quickly, Obama's Friday schedule was amended for him to get some news coverage about what he'd already told Homeland Security to do: Permit illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children to remain here under certain conditions, not including citizenship.

The unexpected announcement, which always raises the attention level in that D.C. hothouse, was widely touted by the media as a brilliant political move that would not only back Republicans into a corner somewhere, but earn a badly-needed poll boost for the Democrat languishing dangerously well below 50% approval in an election year.

It also replaced the Cleveland lecture with a fresh discussion topic for the Sunday morning talk-show agenda that sets the tone for the new week. There, on several channels White House strategist David Plouffe kept a straight face. He maintained that c'mon, this president, who did nothing on immigration reform for 3.5 years, had no political motive whatsoever in making the immigrant announcement just 144 days before his attempted reelection.

As phony as it was, turns out, that was a good thing for Plouffe to say because -- guess what? -- Obama's dramatic illegal immigration non-amnesty amnesty did nothing politically for the Chicagoan in the polls. Zip. Nada. Rien.